<p>kchen, liveitout, & RockyMountains,
you all have it right. And I always also appreciate N’starmom’s corrections of people’s misunderstandings – & sometimes outright ignorance – about minority admissions.</p>
<p>There have been a lot of conversations about this on PF lately. Not that they don’t come up every year: they do. It’s just that, as RM notes, the Perfect Storm-“impossible”-odds was especially brutal & dizzying this year – a fact which was predicted by some of us who were merely reading demographic tables – never mind any clairvoyance. The upper-level schools tend to be able to fill their freshman classrooms 3 times over with qualified applicants, & this has held over the last few admissions cycles. </p>
<p>It (the mismatch between available seats & qualified applicants)is definitely not “fair.” Nor am I making any statement about the particular admittee being complained about, except that, as others have noted, the “qualifications” are determined by the colleges, not by the applicant’s classmates, by student competitors, nor by parents of hopefuls. The colleges have no wish to shoot themselves in the feet by admitting loser candidates. They expect an overwhelming amount of those admitted to do well, or at least to graduate: they are making individual judgments about that based on the applicant’s record of ability – a record that is not accessible to our eyes. Any admission by a college is an investment, thus a financial commitment as well – even if not a dime of aid is requested or awarded.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that there will be non-URM’s accepted into high-profile colleges who have achieved <em>less</em>, including quantitatively, than some URM’s accepted to those same colleges. That’s why this line of argument is scapegoating.</p>
<p>We DO all need to take a deep breath & stand back, including parents. Parents need to follow their own “Love Thy Safety” advice if they have prospective seniors graduating in the next few years. Yet I see some parents “pointing fingers” on PF threads, too – targeting AA as the culprit, or “randomness” as the reason – as if admissions committees are blindly pulling “accept” apps out of a hat. Selective U’s are rejecting qualified students of every race, by the armful. The decisions are very deliberate, but are not a comment on the academic worthiness of those rejected, merely a comment on who that college has decided to keep for this particular year, given similarities in many of those apps.</p>
<p>I know a Sr. who is miserable right now because she applied to 11 reaches & only 1 match & 2 safeties. She’s been rejected from all those reaches. In her case, she really did over-reach. In her case, guaranteed that she was not passed over for minority candidates, merely for reaching too high given her stats. I will be encouraging my own D to apply to about 8 safeties, 3 matches, and 1 reach. (Because by that time, some of those “safeties” will probably be matches!)</p>